• Tag Archives battery
  • The bike

    So, I haven’t posted about biking in a while, because I have been recovering from an accident I had down in Orlando about two months ago.

    It had just started raining, for the first time in about a month, and I lost control of the bike on a curve due to “Florida Black Ice”, i.e. an oil slick that appeared because of the rain.

    Personal damage: A banged up knee, a shredded arm, and my pride. Suck.

    Bike damage:

    • Headlight rim
    • Headlight casing
    • Brake lever
    • Right hand turn signals (front and rear)
    • Right hand mirror
    • Speedometer casing

    The brake lever was one of the more odd things, because it was bent way out instead of what you would think it would, which would be to bend in towards the handlebar. There are some other dings and stuff, a couple of dents in the tank, and the front tree is a bit…skewed. Wear pattern on the front tire is normal, and it rides straight, but when I am going straight down the road and I look down at the handlebars, they point a little to the left. A little bit disconcerting, but I am just going to leave it as it adds character to the bike.

    I also just replaced the battery, as it was no longer holding a charge. The bike is a 2006, so the OEM battery is about four years old. Now, as far as I am concerned, people should never have to do regular battery maintenance on car style batteries these days. You put them in the car and forget them. Not so with motorcycle batteries, apparently. The OEM battery I pulled out had zero water in it. How it had been working for so long I have no idea. One thought I do have is that it may have sprung a leak during the accident… no idea, and there is no apparent damage to the casing. Anyway, I replaced that with a G-Bat, which is a gel-style battery, and life is good. No maintenance on the battery, and I swear the whole bike is running better because of it. The battery was a bit of a bitch to install, however, because you have to remove the padding that is in the battery box in order for it to fit, and then the terminals are not in exactly the same place, so tightening down things was a bit of a nightmare.